Error Message: Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your system

Error Message:Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your system

ok, just for the record-, what stryfe wrote earlier in this thread with the dowload from dell website worked for us. we got an external usb floppy drive, loaded the file, and hit F6 during setup , and loaded the files, and it could then see the hard drive after that.

Whenever I try to install a fresh copy of windows I get the "setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer".

I am using a Dell Inspiron 1150, the hard drive is a Hitachi Travelstar 30 GB, and I have a USB floppy drive. I am not sure where to get the driver for this hard drive, can any of you help me please? If you need any more information, I'll tell you what ever you need to know.

the dell website for the floppy disk that stryfe had suggested? and use the F6 button? that worked for us... i recommend trying that... so when windows asks for a 3rd part scsi driver (even though you aren't loading scsi) it will direct the setup to your floppy and load those drivers, so it can see the hard drive.

I downloaded the thing Stryfe suggested, and booted from the CD, used the F6 button, and it gave me two choices, RAID or AHCI. First I chose AHCI because that is what he used, and that did not worked. Next I started over again, then instead of using AHCI I chose to use RAID, and that did not work also. Sorry about all this.

nLite and SATA drivers fix the error: Setup did not find any hard disk drives

Forget the floppy... nLite is the answer!

Use the nLite freeware application to integrate the necessary SATA drivers into a new bootable XP CD.

I just successfully did a fresh XP install on an Acer Power F5 with SATA HDD. I downloaded the SATA drivers and used nLite to integrate them into a new bootable CD which I burned and then used for the install.

PS: I tried to include direct links but as this is my virgin post, I wasn't allowed... so you'll have to use the power of the Google.

Hey all. I am new to this forum, but I have this problem, and i desperately need help:

I started getting the "unmountable boot volume" error. So I put the XP cd in to repair it and it then said that it couldnt find my hard drive at all. So I called a couple local computer techs and they said that my hard drive could be dead (which was some devastating news). So I tried a couple of other methods to fix the problem, and still I get no solution. So now i just wonder if there is a way to get my files and media from my original hard drive. Silly me, I didnt back up anything, so I would hate to lose it, some files are not replaceable.

Attached Files:

I have a three month old Dell Dimension 8400. 3.0 GHZ P4, 1 Gig Ram and a 160 gig SATA Hard Drive. When I got the computer I used the files and transfer (PC Relocator) utility. And had a bunch of unwanted extras that came with it. I'm having a Satellite Internet system installed and they wanted a clean install of windows XP. So I opened the owner’s manual and got out the reinstallation disk and the problems began. By the way Dell tech support's only response has been to say gee that's not right, and would send a tech sometime after Christmas. Anyway heres step by step what I did.
I boot to the Dell reinstallation disk. The windows setup screen appears and loads files. The next screen says welcome to setup and offers three options. 1-to setup XP press enters. 2 To repair XP press R 3 to exit without installing XP press F3
I press enter and the following message comes up. Setup did not find any hard disk installed in your computer. Make sure any hard disk drives are powered on and properly connected. And any disk related configuration is correct.ect. Press F3 to quit. It dose this if I try repair also.
Dell had me check the connections to the HD and Motherboard. They’re good. And debug the hard drive. No luck. Everything worked fine until I put in the reinstallation disk.
Any help would be welcome.

Click to expand...

you can try the following.. it worked for me
Resolving "Setup did not find any hard disk drives" during Windows XP Installation
One of the most popular topics among our readers is installing Windows XP on your new Windows Vista computer - sometimes for compatibility reasons, but also because a lot of people just don't like Vista very much.
The problem that people keep running into left and right is getting to the point where XP starts to install and getting the message "Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer". This error happens because your new computer has a storage controller that isn't supported natively in XP, usually an SATA (Serial ATA) controller.

If you don't have a floppy drive in your computer (who does anymore), then you'll need to use a process called slip-streaming to integrate the storage drivers into your XP installation CD.
It should go without saying that this is an advanced topic, so proceed with caution.
Creating a Custom XP Install
We'll use a software called nLite to create a new XP install cd, so you'll first need to download and install it. Once it starts up, you'll be prompted for your Windows installation, so you'll want to click the Browse button.

First you'll be prompted for the "Windows installation", which really means your XP install CD. Find it and select the root of the installation, and then click OK to go to the next dialog.

Next you'll be prompted on where you want to save the temporary files used during the slip-streaming process. I chose to create a new directory and called it XPISO, but you can put it wherever you'd like. I just recommend to use a new directory.

nLite will copy all the necessary files off the XP installation and into the temporary folder. When it's done, you'll see all the information on which version it is.

Hit the next button until you come to this screen, where you can select what options you want. Select "Drivers" and then "Bootable ISO".

Side note: You can select any of the other options if you'd like. nLite will let you bundle updates, set tweaks or automatically remove components from the installation, but that all goes beyond the scope of this article.
Hit the next button until you get to the screen for selecting drivers. If you click the Insert button, you can choose between adding a single driver or adding a folder of drivers. Since we'll just be loading a single driver, you can choose that option, but you might want to first read the section below about finding drivers for XP.

Browse to the directory where you extracted the driver files, and then select Open. Note that it doesn't really matter which of the *.inf files you choose, because it will select all files in the folder anyway.

nLite will prompt you to select your driver. If you don't know which exact one it is, you can either use Device Manager in Vista to find the exact model, or you can just select all of them. Just be careful not to select a 64-bit driver if you are using 32-bit, or the wrong OS version.

I would recommend including both Storage and Network drivers, as those are the most common drivers that are missing in XP.
Once you proceed to the next screen, now we can finally finish the process. You can choose to directly burn the cd here, or you can select Create Image to create an ISO file that you can burn to a CD using whatever burning tool you have.
Note: If you chose to create an ISO, make sure to use the "Make ISO" button before you click Next.

At this point you can burn the ISO image to a CD, and then start your XP installation process.
Finding Drivers for XP
The best place to search for drivers for your hardware is at the manufacturer's support website. The only problem is that almost every manufacturer seems to distribute their drivers in floppy disk image form, even though the computer they are for doesn't have a floppy drive. Guess nobody has alerted them to get with the program.
We can still extract the drivers using an application called WinImage. Let's run through a quick example… Here you can see the Intel SATA controller driver for my HP computer.

I downloaded and ran the executable, which extracted a file called f6flpy32.exe into a temporary directory. Don't bother trying to run this one, because it'll just prompt you for a floppy drive.

So how to get the drivers out of this file? There are a few options that you can try, depending on how the manufacturer packed the files.
• You can use Winimage to extract them, which is a shareware software, but you can use it during the trial period for free.
• You can try and use WinRar to extract the file. In many instances this will extract a *.flp file, which you can mount in a VMware virtual machine or potentially with some ISO mounting software.
• Some drivers will allow you to automatically extract into a directory. You'll have to try it and see what happens.
• Other methods? If you've got other ideas, leave them in the comments and I'll add them to this list.
Here's the list of files that Winimage can handle, which is quite a lot.

Start WinImage and then open the file, and you should see the contents. Just extract them to a folder, preferably with a useful name so you can remember it later.

Resolving "Setup did not find any hard disk drives" during Windows XP Installation
One of the most popular topics among our readers is installing Windows XP on your new Windows Vista computer - sometimes for compatibility reasons, but also because a lot of people just don't like Vista very much.
The problem that people keep running into left and right is getting to the point where XP starts to install and getting the message "Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer". This error happens because your new computer has a storage controller that isn't supported natively in XP, usually an SATA (Serial ATA) controller.

If you don't have a floppy drive in your computer (who does anymore), then you'll need to use a process called slip-streaming to integrate the storage drivers into your XP installation CD.
It should go without saying that this is an advanced topic, so proceed with caution.
Creating a Custom XP Install
We'll use a software called nLite to create a new XP install cd, so you'll first need to download and install it. Once it starts up, you'll be prompted for your Windows installation, so you'll want to click the Browse button.

First you'll be prompted for the "Windows installation", which really means your XP install CD. Find it and select the root of the installation, and then click OK to go to the next dialog.

Next you'll be prompted on where you want to save the temporary files used during the slip-streaming process. I chose to create a new directory and called it XPISO, but you can put it wherever you'd like. I just recommend to use a new directory.

nLite will copy all the necessary files off the XP installation and into the temporary folder. When it's done, you'll see all the information on which version it is.

Hit the next button until you come to this screen, where you can select what options you want. Select "Drivers" and then "Bootable ISO".

Side note: You can select any of the other options if you'd like. nLite will let you bundle updates, set tweaks or automatically remove components from the installation, but that all goes beyond the scope of this article.
Hit the next button until you get to the screen for selecting drivers. If you click the Insert button, you can choose between adding a single driver or adding a folder of drivers. Since we'll just be loading a single driver, you can choose that option, but you might want to first read the section below about finding drivers for XP.

Browse to the directory where you extracted the driver files, and then select Open. Note that it doesn't really matter which of the *.inf files you choose, because it will select all files in the folder anyway.

nLite will prompt you to select your driver. If you don't know which exact one it is, you can either use Device Manager in Vista to find the exact model, or you can just select all of them. Just be careful not to select a 64-bit driver if you are using 32-bit, or the wrong OS version.

I would recommend including both Storage and Network drivers, as those are the most common drivers that are missing in XP.
Once you proceed to the next screen, now we can finally finish the process. You can choose to directly burn the cd here, or you can select Create Image to create an ISO file that you can burn to a CD using whatever burning tool you have.
Note: If you chose to create an ISO, make sure to use the "Make ISO" button before you click Next.

At this point you can burn the ISO image to a CD, and then start your XP installation process.
Finding Drivers for XP
The best place to search for drivers for your hardware is at the manufacturer's support website. The only problem is that almost every manufacturer seems to distribute their drivers in floppy disk image form, even though the computer they are for doesn't have a floppy drive. Guess nobody has alerted them to get with the program.
We can still extract the drivers using an application called WinImage. Let's run through a quick example… Here you can see the Intel SATA controller driver for my HP computer.

I downloaded and ran the executable, which extracted a file called f6flpy32.exe into a temporary directory. Don't bother trying to run this one, because it'll just prompt you for a floppy drive.

So how to get the drivers out of this file? There are a few options that you can try, depending on how the manufacturer packed the files.
• You can use Winimage to extract them, which is a shareware software, but you can use it during the trial period for free.
• You can try and use WinRar to extract the file. In many instances this will extract a *.flp file, which you can mount in a VMware virtual machine or potentially with some ISO mounting software.
• Some drivers will allow you to automatically extract into a directory. You'll have to try it and see what happens.
• Other methods? If you've got other ideas, leave them in the comments and I'll add them to this list.
Here's the list of files that Winimage can handle, which is quite a lot.

Start WinImage and then open the file, and you should see the contents. Just extract them to a folder, preferably with a useful name so you can remember it later.

I created an account as well as Pachelbel9 to thank you and Stryfe for your posts. This is one thing I love about the IT community. That is, we don't know everything about everything and so when we come across something we haven't seen before there's people out there who have and post their solutions online.

I have the same problem. My pc doesn't have a floppy drive, so what should I do? When I try to install Vista I have no problems, but when I install Xp I get the same error as you guys. I have an Acer, can't turn nothing on, simple BIOS settings.

thank you mate. wanted to boot with a win 2003 svr cd to make a clean install but I couldn't. I even reformated and deleted everything with killdisk but to no avail. rearranged the boot sequence still nothing. Then I tried your simple instructions voila! I got rid of my Vista ultimate finally.

I just love the freedom of having full control of deleting, reformating and reinstalling as I wish.

I am having a similiar problem, but my options are not exactly whats described so far I don't think. I am working on a laptop for a friend. Its a Toshiba Portege. It came with Vista, but he wanted XP Tablet edition. I am getting the same error about not finding a hard drive. My options under system setup and drives are

Built in HDD = Serial ATA Port0
Select Bay = Primary IDE(1F0H/IRQ14)

And the only RAID option I have is

Create State
Built-in HDD =1RAID-0

It has XP PRO now, I installed that before I knew he needed the tablet edition. I installed XP Pro fine, but going to tablet edition I got the error?

I completely feel your pain. I have the same system and just fixed the same problem. Here's what I did. And by the way, 2 hours of tech support with Dell did nothing for me other than give me practice understanding Pakistan accents. I eventually stumbled on the solution myself w/o dell's help.

Reboot your system and hit F2 as soon as you see the Dell startup screen (the options are F2 for setup, F12 for boot sequence).

In the System Setup screen, do these steps.

Select Drives:
Make sure your Diskette Drive (3.5 floppy) is set properly (Usually set to Internal)
Make sure that "Drive 0: SATA-0" drive is set to "ON"

Go to "SATA Operation":

Your system proabaly came set to "RAID Autodetect / AHCI" - THIS SETTING CAUSES YOUR SYSTEM TO GO INTO AN IDE LOOP AND DOESN'T ALLOW IT TO FIND YOUR FACTORY INSTALLED SATA DRIVE.

CHANGE THE SATA OPERATION SETTING TO "COMBINATION"

Reboot - make sure that the boot sequence is set to CD rom before HD and make sure that the reinstall CD is in the drive. Setup will load, hit enter to reinstall XP. Your HD should now be detected and you should see the licensing agreement.

If you have your files backed up I reccommend deleting the partition and reformatting prior to installing XP, it will give you that option after the license agreement.

Once you have successfully reinstalled the OS, Dell reccommends that you change the SATA Operation setting back to RAID AUTODETECT / AHCI (or back to whatever your factory setting was) to avoid any problems with other IDE devices installed on your system.

Hope that helps!

Good luck!

Click to expand...

Wow! I spent the whole day troubleshooting this problem. I post on this sight and another. nobody new the answer. and then I found this post. Thanks Tyler. you saved me!!! Architecture Student in finals with PC problems!

I completely feel your pain. I have the same system and just fixed the same problem. Here's what I did. And by the way, 2 hours of tech support with Dell did nothing for me other than give me practice understanding Pakistan accents. I eventually stumbled on the solution myself w/o dell's help.

Reboot your system and hit F2 as soon as you see the Dell startup screen (the options are F2 for setup, F12 for boot sequence).

In the System Setup screen, do these steps.

Select Drives:
Make sure your Diskette Drive (3.5 floppy) is set properly (Usually set to Internal)
Make sure that "Drive 0: SATA-0" drive is set to "ON"

Go to "SATA Operation":

Your system proabaly came set to "RAID Autodetect / AHCI" - THIS SETTING CAUSES YOUR SYSTEM TO GO INTO AN IDE LOOP AND DOESN'T ALLOW IT TO FIND YOUR FACTORY INSTALLED SATA DRIVE.

CHANGE THE SATA OPERATION SETTING TO "COMBINATION"

Reboot - make sure that the boot sequence is set to CD rom before HD and make sure that the reinstall CD is in the drive. Setup will load, hit enter to reinstall XP. Your HD should now be detected and you should see the licensing agreement.

If you have your files backed up I reccommend deleting the partition and reformatting prior to installing XP, it will give you that option after the license agreement.

Once you have successfully reinstalled the OS, Dell reccommends that you change the SATA Operation setting back to RAID AUTODETECT / AHCI (or back to whatever your factory setting was) to avoid any problems with other IDE devices installed on your system.

Hope that helps!

Good luck!

Click to expand...

I just wasted over an hour on the phone with Dell "tech support" only to find your post when I hung up. I got nowhere with Dell, as usual, and your suggestion worked immediately. I am a happy camper and I thank you!

I completely feel your pain. I have the same system and just fixed the same problem. Here's what I did. And by the way, 2 hours of tech support with Dell did nothing for me other than give me practice understanding Pakistan accents. I eventually stumbled on the solution myself w/o dell's help.

Reboot your system and hit F2 as soon as you see the Dell startup screen (the options are F2 for setup, F12 for boot sequence).

In the System Setup screen, do these steps.

Select Drives:
Make sure your Diskette Drive (3.5 floppy) is set properly (Usually set to Internal)
Make sure that "Drive 0: SATA-0" drive is set to "ON"

Go to "SATA Operation":

Your system proabaly came set to "RAID Autodetect / AHCI" - THIS SETTING CAUSES YOUR SYSTEM TO GO INTO AN IDE LOOP AND DOESN'T ALLOW IT TO FIND YOUR FACTORY INSTALLED SATA DRIVE.

CHANGE THE SATA OPERATION SETTING TO "COMBINATION"

Reboot - make sure that the boot sequence is set to CD rom before HD and make sure that the reinstall CD is in the drive. Setup will load, hit enter to reinstall XP. Your HD should now be detected and you should see the licensing agreement.

If you have your files backed up I reccommend deleting the partition and reformatting prior to installing XP, it will give you that option after the license agreement.

Once you have successfully reinstalled the OS, Dell reccommends that you change the SATA Operation setting back to RAID AUTODETECT / AHCI (or back to whatever your factory setting was) to avoid any problems with other IDE devices installed on your system.

I completely feel your pain. I have the same system and just fixed the same problem. Here's what I did. And by the way, 2 hours of tech support with Dell did nothing for me other than give me practice understanding Pakistan accents. I eventually stumbled on the solution myself w/o dell's help.

Reboot your system and hit F2 as soon as you see the Dell startup screen (the options are F2 for setup, F12 for boot sequence).

In the System Setup screen, do these steps.

Select Drives:
Make sure your Diskette Drive (3.5 floppy) is set properly (Usually set to Internal)
Make sure that "Drive 0: SATA-0" drive is set to "ON"

Go to "SATA Operation":

Your system proabaly came set to "RAID Autodetect / AHCI" - THIS SETTING CAUSES YOUR SYSTEM TO GO INTO AN IDE LOOP AND DOESN'T ALLOW IT TO FIND YOUR FACTORY INSTALLED SATA DRIVE.

CHANGE THE SATA OPERATION SETTING TO "COMBINATION"

Reboot - make sure that the boot sequence is set to CD rom before HD and make sure that the reinstall CD is in the drive. Setup will load, hit enter to reinstall XP. Your HD should now be detected and you should see the licensing agreement.

If you have your files backed up I reccommend deleting the partition and reformatting prior to installing XP, it will give you that option after the license agreement.

Once you have successfully reinstalled the OS, Dell reccommends that you change the SATA Operation setting back to RAID AUTODETECT / AHCI (or back to whatever your factory setting was) to avoid any problems with other IDE devices installed on your system.

Hope that helps!

Good luck!

Click to expand...

thank you so much Tyleryoungblood! Your post helped me get my hard drive working again after the computer had fallen over and got a blank blue screen of death which, after rebooting, caused the disk read error. Nothing I tried would get the disk to be recognized...but your post fixed it! I had an incredibly important file on there that I was able to recover and is now backed up on my web server

yeap definatelly this work for a Compaq presario C500...i went to the Bios setup...and i desabled the SATA feautures in the hard drive...so that was it..and i finally was able to install my new OS....THANKS...!

For those of you who are not finding the settings that Tyler described (like me), all you need to do is go into "Drive Configuration." Set SATA RAID to Off and two more options will pop up below it. Set the top one "Master" to Auto. Mine then came up as a mystery drive. Exit setup and save changes. You should now be able to continue your installation. Thank you Tyler, even if your screens are a bit different you put me on the right track to fix my machine. Now maybe I can sell it since I have a far superior laptop now.

I completely feel your pain. I have the same system and just fixed the same problem. Here's what I did. And by the way, 2 hours of tech support with Dell did nothing for me other than give me practice understanding Pakistan accents. I eventually stumbled on the solution myself w/o dell's help.

Reboot your system and hit F2 as soon as you see the Dell startup screen (the options are F2 for setup, F12 for boot sequence).

In the System Setup screen, do these steps.

Select Drives:
Make sure your Diskette Drive (3.5 floppy) is set properly (Usually set to Internal)
Make sure that "Drive 0: SATA-0" drive is set to "ON"

Go to "SATA Operation":

Your system proabaly came set to "RAID Autodetect / AHCI" - THIS SETTING CAUSES YOUR SYSTEM TO GO INTO AN IDE LOOP AND DOESN'T ALLOW IT TO FIND YOUR FACTORY INSTALLED SATA DRIVE.

CHANGE THE SATA OPERATION SETTING TO "COMBINATION"

Reboot - make sure that the boot sequence is set to CD rom before HD and make sure that the reinstall CD is in the drive. Setup will load, hit enter to reinstall XP. Your HD should now be detected and you should see the licensing agreement.

If you have your files backed up I reccommend deleting the partition and reformatting prior to installing XP, it will give you that option after the license agreement.

Once you have successfully reinstalled the OS, Dell reccommends that you change the SATA Operation setting back to RAID AUTODETECT / AHCI (or back to whatever your factory setting was) to avoid any problems with other IDE devices installed on your system.

Hope that helps!

Good luck!

Click to expand...

********************************************************************************************************
how do you know when the Drive 0: SATA-0" drive is set to "ON? And its doing this with a couple hard drives I have and some will install windows then not start. please someone help. im hopfully posting this somewhere someone can help me..

I completely feel your pain. I have the same system and just fixed the same problem. Here's what I did. And by the way, 2 hours of tech support with Dell did nothing for me other than give me practice understanding Pakistan accents. I eventually stumbled on the solution myself w/o dell's help.

Reboot your system and hit F2 as soon as you see the Dell startup screen (the options are F2 for setup, F12 for boot sequence).

In the System Setup screen, do these steps.

Select Drives:
Make sure your Diskette Drive (3.5 floppy) is set properly (Usually set to Internal)
Make sure that "Drive 0: SATA-0" drive is set to "ON"

Go to "SATA Operation":

Your system proabaly came set to "RAID Autodetect / AHCI" - THIS SETTING CAUSES YOUR SYSTEM TO GO INTO AN IDE LOOP AND DOESN'T ALLOW IT TO FIND YOUR FACTORY INSTALLED SATA DRIVE.

CHANGE THE SATA OPERATION SETTING TO "COMBINATION"

Reboot - make sure that the boot sequence is set to CD rom before HD and make sure that the reinstall CD is in the drive. Setup will load, hit enter to reinstall XP. Your HD should now be detected and you should see the licensing agreement.

If you have your files backed up I reccommend deleting the partition and reformatting prior to installing XP, it will give you that option after the license agreement.

Once you have successfully reinstalled the OS, Dell reccommends that you change the SATA Operation setting back to RAID AUTODETECT / AHCI (or back to whatever your factory setting was) to avoid any problems with other IDE devices installed on your system.

Hope that helps!

Good luck!

Click to expand...

Just today my wife had bought me a new laptop for my birthday with Windows Vista. I have decided to format the laptop and install XP instead but disaster happened, I got the Error that there was no hard disk. So Vista it is what to do, But when I restarted the Laptop vista was gone!!!!!! My wife was sad because the gift she got me didn’t work and I was kind of sad too.... I went online with my home pc and googled the error. Booooooooooooooom Mr. Tyler Post was an angel shining at me... I tried it and it Woooooorked!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So I register to say THANK YOU THANK YOU!!